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Show HN: Swimming in Tech Debt

(helpthisbook.com)
157 points loumf | 1 comments | 05 Sep 25 05:33 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source

This is the first half of my book, “Swimming in Tech Debt”. It is available at a pre-launch sale price of $0.99 (https://loufranco.com/tech-debt-book).

I have been working on it since January 2024. It is based on some posts in my blog, but expands on my ideas quite a bit.

In September 2024, excerpts appeared in Gergely Orosz’s Pragmatic Engineer newsletter, which helped me get a lot of feedback that expanded the book from my initial idea. This half is about what I expected to do before that —- the rest of the book goes into team and CTO practices.

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conartist6 ◴[05 Sep 25 11:51 UTC] No.45137491[source]▶
The swimming analogy is not a strong start. You disavow an obvious and strong analogy to monetary debt right away while dumping us into this strange metaphor that depends on us having an intuition for how you think and feel about swimming, and specifically swimming laps? Instead of setting the stakes high right off the bat you've lowered them and lost my attention with this wandering train of thought that has no clear relationship to the topic you wish to discuss...
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d0mine ◴[05 Sep 25 19:29 UTC] No.45142642[source]▶
Monetary debt is often a useful tool. Technical debt in many cases is just shortsightedness in throwing delayed time bombs around. It is built on the hope that you won't need to return on this minefield again (the product dies sooner).
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1. mikestorrent ◴[05 Sep 25 23:08 UTC] No.45144769[source]▶
This is a good insight. The real gambles behind tech debt are not taken on the same way a company would take on real debt. If there is analysis of it, and it's not just a sneaky shortcut by a dev (either being lazy or working to a deadline), then it's not considered in terms of future cash flow or any other kind of meaningful metrics that matter over time. It only comes due if you want it to; you only pay interest on it when you interact with it. Sometimes it really is Good Enough for the slapdash thing you're working on. Sometimes more crap on top of more crap is just how the thing you're working on goes, and trying to fix it is tilting at windmills... especially if it's just to make your employer rich by mildly improving efficiency on their ad delivery platform.